Time Warner Cable to hike rates for Internet service

Time Warner Cable will increase its Internet rates by an average of $3 a month, effective with bills dated Aug. 9 or later. “The price adjustment assures customers will continue to experience fast reliable Internet service,” a spokesman said.

News of the rate increase comes a day after 2,000 Time Warner Cable customers in the Capital Region lost Internet and phone service. Technicians at Time Warner were able to restore service by 6:30 p.m. Thursday to most customers, some of whom had been without service for 18 hours.

The rate increase won’t affect all customers.

“Many of our customers — about 60 percent — are in promotional packages,” a spokesman said. They won’t see an increase until their particular package expires.

Time Warner Cable said demand for bandwidth has increased as applications such as gaming and video streaming have gained popularity. It said the demand has required additional investments in its network and infrastructure.

34 Responses

TWC has a lot of gall announcing this after yesterday’s fiasco. I am not buying the increased bandwidth excuse. The TWC infrastructure simply cannot support today’s demands in many areas. The equipment is too old and the copper-based transmission lines are a major bottleneck.

Can Verizon seriously set up shop in Albany?! I’m so over TWC and their horrendous service and nonexistent customer service. They charge a ridiculous amount for mediocre (at best) service. My internet goes down at least once a month, and sometimes it’s once or twice a week. Biggest rip off ever.

Yup rr used to be great years ago, now rr gets slower
everday. Oh so lets jack the price up instead.
half the time I cant even view a web site its so slow. I have three pc and an ipad and slow on all. Tech support says its on my end. though. The phone support is the worst unless you calling yo pay your bill.

Nice move day before the service WAS NOT working so instead of lowering price or saying sorry they add insult to injury and hike rates. Every time we have no service they should be paying us not we pay them.

Time to ditch TWC from providing internet use only. not worth the cable package to have kids glued to it. Verizon FIOS smokes TWC which has slowed dosn significantly in Albany and Troy. We need fiber speed for all, get the Cable monoply over with.

Costs are increasing for everyone. Why anyone who has a choice between TWC and Verizon Fios still has TWC is beyond me. I was a customer of TWC since I moved to this are in 1987. When Verizon Fios became available as internet only in my area, I was exteremely pleased how much faster the connections were than TWC. A couple of years ago years ago, FIOS TV service finally became available. My fiest two year contract just ended and I couldn’t wait to renew. My internet speed is now 50/25mps comopared to TWC’s roadrunner which is only 15/15 mps. Fios TV picture is so much clearer than TWC. Cost are below what TWC charged for their inferior services. FIOS is better due to a true fiber optic network, all the way into your house. TWC advertises fiber optics, but it is mainly good old fashioned copper coax cable into your house. Even if Fios was more expensive, I’ve always felt that TWC had screwed me over the years with ever increasing costs and justify it with junk channele they pay nothing for and no one wants to watch.

FIOS isn’t available everywhere. Waterford, where I live, doesn’t have it nor do many parts of Niskayuna, where I spned a lot of time. Until then, we are stuck with TWC. And I use stuck in the most unnice way.

That would be fine if they actually could provide fast internet, but it’s terrible. Like others have said, it gets slower every day. Do a speedcheck, RR is one of the worst compared to national averages. We already dumped the cable, now just waiting for FIOS to come to our area so we can ditch TW forever.

someone in marketing didn’t read the paper yesterday or get the message from operations that today might not be a good day to announce this sort of thing….the verizon stores may be a bit busier this weekend

The only way out of the cable monopolies, their shady practices, and their ridiculous pricing schemes is to set up municipal cable systems. Municipalities across the nation that have done so generally enjoy faster data speeds at a far lower cost. The city of Wilson, NC is a good example of this. Their municipal cableco offers pricing that is *half* that of TWCs for their entry level All-In-One package (http://www.greenlightnc.com/packages/), and getting everything – including HBO, Showtime, etc – is $160/mo. How many of us pay $200+/month just for basic HD All-In-One service with a DVR once we’re off TWCs “special” rates?

When Wilson set up their municipal cableco, TWC didn’t go down without a fight. They tried to stop the town from doing so first by going to court, and then by lobbying the NC state legislature to outlaw municipal cablecos.

Wilson is just one example out of many where people got rid of TWC by collectively taking matters into their own hands.

Exploring your suggestion makes a lot of sense. Seems most people don’t realize Verizon is trying to get out from under copper and fios lines. I noticed they have started to heavily advertise “Voice Link” in this area. It retains your existing in house phones but your wiring hooks to a box installed on your house that links to Verizon cellular. Problem with that is you lose services such as ability to fax and DSL internet service.

My guess is that Verizon will move faster than the regulators as my readings indicate they want to get out from under the expense of installation and maintanence of both copper and fiber optics.

As crazy as it might seem don’t be surprised if in the next decade you see a merger proposal between Verizon and TWC.

REALLY! My internet conenction is so slow, it is like watching paint dry. The wireless service is even worse, even with a new modem installed by one of their techs. No service anywhere in the house unless you are sitting right next to the modem. When I call for tech support they blame it on me. Don’t even get me started on the TV and the cable boxes that have to be re-booted everyday. The only positive with their 3 in 1 service is the phone, never any issues. Hey TWC and own up to your crappy service, do something to fix it and stop increasing your rates.

When I moved out here to Scary County, I was disappointed that TW service didn’t reach up the hill to my ‘hood — “insufficient population density.”

So I had to make do with Middleburgh Telephone’s DSL Internet, and over-the-air t.v. reception. Internet hums right along, and I get from 19 to 25 channels (more come in upstairs, than downstairs). One, from as far away as Utica.

I’ve about had it with TWC also. I dropped phone and tv when my rates went up and they still couldn’t do any better than $60/mo. Then they continued to bill me for the full package after they had shut my services off! The first person we talked to had no clue what we were talking about and told us to wait for our next bill to come out. The second said I would receive a check for the amount they over-billed me. Have yet to receive check. I then decided to call and cancel altogether, only to have them “find” me internet for $30/month. Great! Then I receive a letter in the mail that they require a deposit and prepayment since they cannot access my credit report. Ummmm, I’ve been a subscriber for about 5 years now and have always had auto-pay, which means no late payments. This time I will REALLY be cancelling. Oh, and I hate calling for assistance and having someone try and sell me more services. HATE HATE HATE. I want help with the crappy service I already have, not added crappy services for more money!

I have had ongoing internet issues for three months. I cannot even begin to tell you how many phone calls I have made to them going through the robotic automated portion and then talking to robotic customer service reps, only to have them blame my router while I’m watching their modem reset itself over and over. I’ve had 4-5 technicians come out.One replaces the coax, one replaces “faulty” connectors, the next says it’s at the mainline, someone comes out to fix the mainline and leaves it uncovered. Every tech is a know-it-all who actually seems to know nothing. NO apologies on TWC’s part. Now the issue affects two of my neighbors.I had DSL before this and truthfully don’t see any increase in speed with RR.I have had an Ooma for phone service for years.It is definitely time for a Roku and ditching TWC all together. There are so many choices out there between Netflix, Vudu, Amazon Prime, Play On/Play Later and so on. Goodbye TWC!!!

Where are the politicians with this one? Seems like a lot of angry voters regarding Time Warner and their service and people like me in Clifton Park have no other option. It’s like Time Warner has a monopoly. Somebody needs to step up and do something about this.

I can’t believe this. This is the biggest bunch of BS. Here in Ballston Lake my modem needs to be reset at least once a week and Netflix comes to a screeching halt all the time. We have no choices, this is pure crap! I have TW internet and phone and I already pay $106.00/month. We need an alternative to TW now!!!!

the reason the price is increasign is because the speeds are and the fact that you compare dish and directs internet to timewarners is a joke when if you actually had any knowledge of internet and networks you would know dish partners with either satilite or dsl internet and doesnt even come close to the speeds time warner offers, if you dont like the price drop down a level of internet, itll still be faster than the other offers. prices are going up everywhere cable is a luxury item and if you complaining about the price maybe you should see about getting a better job so you can have the luxurys you want in life, i pay 100 dollars a month for the ultimate internet and i couldnt be happier.

\\Ignoring your atrocious English skills for a moment:
\\
You’re happily paying $100 a month JUST for Internet? Congratulations, you are exactly the type of sucker Time Warner wants us all to be. Do you realize that we here in the United States pay relatively high prices for relatively poor service compared to many other parts of the world? And we’re supposed to be one of the world’s technological leaders?

High prices for bad service is why you see many people dumping Time Warner TV in favor of satellite, even if they have little choice but to keep RoadRunner. It’s also why you see high conversion rates to Fios in the few areas where it’s available. The cable companies enjoy a near-monopoly in this nation and our elected officials at every level stand by and let it happen; their rationale is that it’s not a total monopoly because we can still get satellite TV and DSL Internet, which fails to take into consideration that many apartment dwellers are locked into cable and that DSL is even worse than the slop that passes for cable Internet in this country.

Unfortunately, we cannot count on the federal or state governments to do anything about this, and very few local municipalities have the guts to take on Big Cable and wire up their own networks. Google Fiber looks promising, but it’s only available in the Kansas City area right now and there’s no guarantee that they will ever expand nationwide.